There is a surreal disconnect between what is going on in geopolitics and what is being discussed about geopolitics. The military establishment now speaks openly about the adversary being a “near” competitor rather than the small, ill-equipped opponents that the US faced in the past. This is weird, given that the practical issue is that Russia is threatening to deploy and use nuclear weapons on Earth and in space, which means they are a peer, not a near-peer. Also, those pesky non-peers always end up forcing the US to withdraw or concede defeat: Iraq, Afghanistan, Houthis, Hamas. People in the financial markets and the military alike spend time comparing military capability, strategy, and tactics, assuming Russia or China can be easily defeated in a tank-to-tank or ship-to-ship scenario. China and Russia know they cannot defeat the US using traditional military means. Their strategy is simple. Force the US to deploy military assets, which will bleed America dry of cash at a time when the US budget deficit is already overwhelmingly too large and perhaps unfixable. Create inflation by any means because the US is very politically sensitive to inflation, especially in the run-up to an important election. Open multiple geopolitical fronts because the US can’t handle a multi-front conflict very well.
This is geopolitical Jiu-Jitsu. Instead of trying to beat the US as if in a boxing match, the idea is to rely on leverage to force the Americans and NATO to respond in ways that are harmful to themselves. By arming and supporting smaller, more aggressive militants, such as the Houthis, Hamas, and Iran, China and Russia compel the US to place the US Navy on high alert in the Middle East, call it Defcon 3, and force them to remain at that level of readiness for as long as possible. Why? Because that costs a bomb. China then sends a few warships to Japan and Taiwan and forces the US to do the same in the Pacific. Why, because that too costs a bomb. Keep this up by having proxies, including Iran, lobbing bombs (the ones that don’t do that much damage) and threatening to escalate. Then, the US doesn’t just stand up military assets but is forced to remain deployed in a state of high alert. The sound of this geopolitical Jiu-Jitsu is Cha-ching. You can hear the cash draining away.
It is worth reminding ourselves that excessive blood loss is the number one killer on the battleground. Americans can furiously debate military strategy and fall back on the belief that we would always win a military conflict, even as we are bleeding out, not even realizing the situation requires a tourniquet. Similarly, the markets debate Federal Reserve policy without making any reference to the fact that conflict is inflationary and fiscally mortal. This geopolitical Jiu-Jitsu is designed to deny the Fed any opportunity to cut rates and may well force them to raise rates.
All this has become especially surreal in the last few weeks as military planners have had to face terrible and profound questions like – will Israel nuke/bomb Iran? Will Iran nuke/bomb Israel? Will Russia use any of this as an excuse to nuke/bomb Ukraine? Will the US nuke/bomb anybody in response? While most of us are out choosing what is wise to have for lunch, strategic security specialists have been busy trying to figure out the options on the nuclear/war menu.
We all seem to have forgotten the purpose of all this military spending is deterrence. If we have to use the military, we have failed. But, I ask myself, can we spend this much money on deterrence capabilities and weapons, and never use them? How do you keep the military in a state of full alert with the most powerful military capabilities ever devised, taken all the safeties off, and make sure nobody actually pulls a trigger or pushes a button? This is heavy stuff. Most everybody feels they are not responsible for the outcome here. Military people say they are just taking orders. Political leaders say they are awaiting military advice. The general citizenry is ignorant of the events in play or the gravity of the situation. Even if they knew, they’d feel helpless. Those creating the technologies that will permit modern warfare are only focused on the commercial aspects of their endeavors and see the use of such tech as somebody else’s call. How is all this possible?
We got part of the answer from a brilliant writer and an editor at NPR, Uri Berliner, a few weeks ago. He unleashed a firestorm in American politics with an opinion piece entitled: I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust: Uri Berliner, a veteran at the public radio institution, says the network lost its way when it started telling listeners how to think. As a result of the article, Berliner was suspended for five days without pay. Politico points out that he broke NPR’s rules about not publishing on other platforms. But, “Let’s not kid ourselves. He was docked a week’s pay for his message, not his conduct.” His managing editor at NPR wrote,
“Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions,” she wrote. “Questioning whether our people are serving our mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” In response to all this, he resigned. Basically, he said that the media in the US stopped reporting the news or offering different angles on it. Instead, the news media tells Americans the version of reality that they want them to believe. It doesn’t offer varying ways of framing reality anymore.
Why do we care? We care because this 4th Estate brouhaha reveals that there is a serious gap between what is happening in reality and what is being discussed in the media. That gap exists in almost every important issue I see in the world economy. The problem here is that the media has squirreled itself into a cozy burrow of like-minded thinkers. That means the public does not have any idea of what is really going on in the world, especially in the realm of geopolitics. This is a serious problem given the perilous state of geopolitics and the various elections being held this year. The issue is the absence of diversity of thinking, a subject I’ve written two books about. These days, people think diversity means ticking boxes: gender, color, capacities, sexual orientation, etc. But, you can have a room full of very diverse people who all think the same thing, like “Donald Trump will never win” or “We can beat China/Russia hands down.” Then you have no diversity of thinking. Berliner referred to it as an “absence of viewpoint diversity.” This is what seems to be happening in modern media. They are achieving diversity of people but not achieving diversity of thinking.
Berliner reminds his readers that NPR stands for National Public Radio. The key words here are “national” and “public,” meaning the institution is supposed to provide the nation with insights about and for the nation as a whole. His article made the case that NPR had become biased and was only telling some stories to some very particular people, leaving out the stories and citizens that they didn’t like and didn’t want to have political power. In simple language, he says NPR had become a voice for the Democrats, particularly President Biden, and was not giving voice to President Trump, or his followers, or any other voices. This is bigger than politics, though. This attitude has caused the media to frame geopolitics in a particular way that obscures reality from view, leaving the country in an increasingly dangerous state of ignorance.
The reality is that geopolitics is vastly larger than just Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan. These are easy to report on. Ukraine and Gaza generate photo ops and human-interest stories. But, the reality is that the modern geopolitical conflict landscape involves naval warfare, including attacks on subsea internet cables and undersea assets globally, submarine warfare, surface warfare, space warfare, and land warfare in locations from the Arctic through the Scandinavian and Baltic states, across Europe, through Africa, the Middle East and in the Asia Pacific region.
There is one other location of warfare today that matters. It used to be that wars were always “over there” and not “here” from a US perspective. Today, military leaders increasingly speak of the war that is occurring in the US. They don’t mean the civil unrest that geopolitics abroad has spurred. They don’t mean the students protesting Israel or the Congressional pushback and reluctance on Ukraine. They mean sabotage. They mean the opponent’s submarines are hovering off the coastlines of the US. They mean nuclear weapons in space that could hurt the US homeland vastly more than any ground-based weapons system. Note that Russia has ever more submarines with ever more capability (nuclear powered + nuclear weapons) in The Atlantic. Eleven of them have apparently been acting “with increasing audacity” off America’s shores. Russia has recently redeployed submarines into the Black Sea in spite of Ukraine’s successful efforts to attack naval assets there. US General Christopher G. Cavoli, the Commander of the U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), testified to the House Armed Services Committee in Congress on April 26th, saying, “Their (Russian submarine) patrols into the Atlantic and throughout the Atlantic are at a high level most of the time, at a higher level than we’ve seen in years” … “and this, despite all the efforts they’re undertaking in Ukraine.”
The US Navy has decided to convert offshore rigs into naval bases, especially in the Pacific, which is experiencing a serious military buildup. These may be used for re-supply but also as missile bases. It seems we are entering a face-off between China’s ability to build islands in the ocean using super-dredgers and versatile 3D printers versus America’s ability to build floating, mobile bases. It’s a competition between America’s most sophisticated subs, The Seawolf’s, hunting in packs (Wolfpacks) versus China’s new submarines, which are ever more technologically advanced. The New York Times writes, “A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter China: With missiles, submarines, and alliances, the Biden Administration has built a presence in the regions to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.” Reuters reports, “China's naval commander Admiral Hu Zhongming and political commissar Yuan Huazhi had a "deep exchange of views" with U.S. Pacific Fleet chief Admiral Stephen Koehler and Russia's naval commander Admiral Alexander Moiseyev” only three days ago for a reason. As the world edges closer to potentially catastrophic events, there is a greater need for conversation. Deterrence requires deconfliction, which requires conversation.
The US and NATO are expanding their presence in the Arctic. The US Army has a new doctrine, operations, and missions in place for the Arctic. Norway, Finland, Canada, and Japan are preparing for conflict in the Arctic. The US is emphasizing that it is not prepared to deal with the Arctic conflict and will need to rely on allies there. See the recently released “Pentagon Arctic Policy Office Underscores Critical Role of Alliances in Evolving Region”
I listed the comments by various NATO military commanders in a recent newsletter. More warnings keep coming. French Rear Admiral Jacques Mallard recently told Politico that “France is shifting from chasing drug traffickers to training for high-intensity warfare because there is an opponent” “who wants to destroy us.”
Meanwhile, China is building out its presence in space and improving its cyber capabilities even further. The US Space Force is about to hold its first military exercises in orbit while Russia has just vetoed the UN efforts to prevent anyone from placing nuclear weapons in space. US Operation Victus Haze will, according to Wired, engage in a “realistic threat response scenario” as the US hints that Russia may already have placed destructive capabilities in space.
The kicker, though, was Christopher Wray, the FBI director, who came out with the clearest statement yet, saying that the conflict is happening inside the US, not abroad. He warned us of China’s “ability to physically wreak havoc on our critical infrastructure at a time of its choosing.” He implied that they (China and Russia) are preparing for a “bold and unrelenting” attack on the US, just waiting “for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow.” Next thing you know, little towns in Texas find the water supply are being hacked and disrupted by nuclear superpowers. The 911 networks went down across South Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, and Texas on April 18th. None of the explanations made any sense, especially since these networks are so distant. The problem isn’t the news—it’s the decision not to print it.
Some of the problems arise from shame and secrets. We might never reframe events properly, preferring to hide reality rather than admit that mistakes were made. For example, it was a highly guarded state secret for 25 years that the Cuban Missile Crisis was provoked when the United States placed Jupiter Missiles (fast, long-range nukes) in Turkey only 130 miles from the Soviet border and in the little village of Gioia del Colle in Southern Italy. These nuclear missiles could reach Moscow in minutes. In response, the Soviets moved nuclear weapons towards Cuba. As the then Secretary of State Dean Rusk put it, The US and Russia went “eyeball-to-eyeball,” and we got within about four hours of unleashing Mutual Assured Destruction. President Kennedy defused the situation by agreeing to a secret deal to remove the Jupiter’s from Turkey and Italy (Operation Pot Pie (who comes up with these names?)). All calmed down. All the parties involved agreed never to mention this for 25 years. It became public in 1986, but by then, everybody had forgotten what had happened. My father helped negotiate that deal, so I have a better idea than most of just how hairy all this was. The deal was so secret that only the Joint Chiefs were informed. Even today, none of this is part of American geopolitical lore, but it is a permanent part of the modern political story for those in the know.
How terrible and ironic if we should repeat that same mistake again, just as we are getting more eyeball-to-eyeball today. Such mistakes are exceedingly expensive. The core question today is: is it more patriotic to raise it or suppress a proper and open discussion of such situations? We may be in the midst of a similarly tricky moment where revelations are made. Still, the media does not put those stories in front of the American public for the reasons Uri Berliner describes. It’s not the narrative they want, even if these are the facts the public need.
We need to tackle these grand questions squarely instead of engaging in squirrelly avoidance. Will spending more on deterrence diminish the risk of conflict or ensure conflict becomes inevitable? What’s the definition of conflict in a world where military leaders are in a global conflict, but the public thinks of the conflict as discrete and localized problems in particular locations? How can we avert a war that the public doesn’t know is already occurring, especially if the war is not going to culminate in old-fashioned combat but rather in a budgetary hole that bleeds America dry of cash? Please help us, NPR, and the rest of the 4th Estate by giving us the real story and giving us a chance to consider all angles. The situation now is nuts and, as the British would say, a bloody mess. Uri Berliner has done us a favor by explaining why the news we need feels unfit to print.
Arguably, the success of substack, and the vile hatred pointed at Elon Musk for his purchase of Twitter are the most evident aspects of the reality that thinking people are tired of the party line and tripe that emanates from the mainstream media. But perhaps, the issue runs deeper than merely the lack of reporting, which is a huge problem, to the change in the education system. the most pernicious problem I think we face is that the next generation has not been taught to gather evidence and think about the potential outcomes of any given situation. rather, they are fed a narrative and told it is the truth, regardless of its veracity, in order to maintain the political goals of the party in power. this is not just an American issue either, as it appears, from what I have read, to be happening throughout the West.
While those who buy the mainstream media stories may have been aghast at Berliner's comments, I think the rest of us simply saw it as proof positive of something that we already knew. Alas, based on NPR's response, there is no embarrassment from their evident failures, they are going to double down.
I've felt for a very long time that most of us are just not getting the information we need to be informed citizen. I consider myself well informed because at my age, I have the time and inclination to do what's necessary to get a balanced view -- multiple sources. It helps to follow the financial markets, and especially if you follow macro views because you, generally, get an unbiased take. But it takes time to do that. Most people don't have the time or the inclination. That's why they're so susceptible to the partisan propaganda that masquerades as news these days. It's a major indictment of our media, to be sure, but in order to fix that, the consumer audience has to show an interest in being challenged. Most people want their biases confirmed, so I don't see much hope there.
It's also an indictment of the educational system that has generated 2 generations, at least, of graduates who've been taught to see the world through the bifurcated and grotesquely simplistic oppressed/oppressor lens. Complicated issues are so much easier to deal with (i.e., not think too much about it) when you can blame it all on the us/them framework.